Kenneth Risdon: Adobe FrameMaker Saves the Day

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About This Episode

In this STC/Adobe interview, Risdon describes a 1,000 page project that had 50 different scientists contributing and was a year overdue. The conversion to FrameMaker "saved" the project by providing sturdy document structure and many features not found in competitive products. Microsoft Word was rejected because the 1,000 page content cause major problems with swapping order and updating massive cross references and index entries.

Interviews with thought leaders at Adobe Day and in the Adobe booth at the STC Summit 2013 in Atlanta. Significant trends covered range from content strategies to visions of the future landscape of tech comm.

In this Adobe/STC interview, Iconlogic's Kevin Siegel expresses a wish list for ePubs: "we are hoping that ePub technology will catch up with the industry. We not only want to take our content out to digital format, but we also want to have interactive content in ePubs to have value add." Kevin maintains that Help authors need to fully embrace HTML5 in order to deliver to multiple platforms.

In this STC/Adobe interview, Paul Wlodarczyk maintains that you should be passionate about your audience. Think about what your readers are trying to. Are they trying to sell something or are they trying to save lives? You need to know the ROI of what you create from the user's perspective.

In this STC/Adobe interview, Sara O'Keefe maintains that your search for a solution should not start with a focus on what tools to select for authoring. You starting point should be determining what type of relevant, business-critical content you need to deliver. Do you need to deliver high quality PDF? Can your users be happy with web and mobile access only? Will your content require a certain type of metadata? How will you manage your content? Once you have answered these questions, then you can qualify and determine which authoring tools will best suit your needs.

In this STC/Adobe interview, Sonali Natarajan of CISCO comments on "Leadership in TechComm". You need your team, because you can't do it alone. As a leader you role is to paint the vision. You company has to change along with the company. New content strategies and methods based on analytics are required. Introducing new technologies can be disruptive, but working together as a team, you can overcome temporary obstacles.

In this STC/Adobe interview, Suzanne Mescan of VASONT discusses how CCMS (Component Content Management Systems) were built today's needs with structured authoring . They build content at the topic level. You edit topics at the topic level, not the document level. This means that you only have to edit content once. Make sure that your CCMS integrates well with FrameMaker or your chosen structured authoring solution.

In this STC/Adobe booth interview, Juergen Muthig talks about how "writing has never been enough" in terms of training for technical communication. Today more emphasis is required on content strategy and project management from the get go.

In this STC/Adobe booth interview, thought leader Rahel Baile discusses the power of making content shareable, and moving beyond mere copy. Copy is the editorial side, whereas content is when we put some techno power behind the copy. Simple steps can amplify the power of "copy" and make it widely available "content." Copy is the editorial side, whereas content is when we put some techno power behind the copy.

In this STC/Adobe booth interview, thought leader Neil Perlin discusses how techcomm Help authors went through a major sea change at WinWriter years ago when Microsoft announced that their Help would be based on HTML, vs. familiar *.chm files. Before that event, the world of techcomm and Help were separate silos. According to Perlin, many of us are still feeling our way around in mobile, as best methods are being defined. Many people are still trying to determine if they are to create eBooks, Apps, mobile Help. Look for several years of disruption as we experienced a dozen years ago when Help shifted to HTML.

"There is a big tangle of content that we have to unravel and work with." In his STC/Adobe booth interview, European though leader, Ray Gallon, eloquently states the challenge that faces us with multiple content stakeholders (creators and consumers.) Watch this video for a vivid "word picture" on how to visualize both the challenge and the solution.

In this STC/Adobe booth interview, thought leader Mark Lewis discusses how project costs go down proportionately to the rate of content re-use. Many people still think that "copy/paste" is a form of content reuse. Mark discusses how the concept is change once, affect many, and further insights into the content life cycle.

In this STC/Adobe booth interview, Molle Barrett discusses the "MOOCs" project. She is cncentrating on the content life cycle in this educational forum. This is an educational opportunity that is open to anyone and has no "dollar sign" on it. Molle sees the next generation of TechComm as made up of people who see no limits and just get it done.

In this STC/Adobe booth interview, Val Swisher of Content Rules shares "what is the one thing I can do to improve my content." The answer? Write shorter sentences. Period. List to discover what the benefits are from this seemingly simple advice.

In this STC/Adobe booth interview, Help expert, John Daigle, (@hypertexas), gives clear guidance to students preparing for a career in technical communications. "If students do their [HTML5] homework, they will be much more successful in getting a job." HTML5 is overtaking the webword because it is so much more adaptive than traditional HTML. Website visitors can see content shrink, swell or change layout, depending on the device and screen used for display.

In this STC/Adobe booth interview, Sara O'Keefe raises some important issues. "We need to make a shift over to being identified as people who make content which affects the business." Sarah would like to see more of a focus on case studies and how a solution would actually affect the overall business. How does info need to be produced in a fashion that will make it effective. It may no longer be just a tech manual.

Rahel Baile reminds us of something critical in this STC/Adobe booth interview: technical communicators need to reclaim content strategy. This space has been widely claimed be marketing people because they are outgoing and part of content strategy is editorial. However, a good portion of content strategy is "technical", and we as tech comm professionals need to reclaim that space, which is ours. Both sides, marketing and editorial, are needed.

In this STC/Adobe booth interview, Matt Sullivan, co-author of "Publishing Fundamentals..." describes the process that he went through to update the book from a much earlier version of FrameMaker to current FrameMaker 11. Matt describes how this book can be a great reference for FrameMaker users, old and new.

In this STC/Adobe interview, Risdon describes a 1,000 page project that had 50 different scientists contributing and was a year overdue. The conversion to FrameMaker "saved" the project by providing sturdy document structure and many features not found in competitive products. Microsoft Word was rejected because the 1,000 page content cause major problems with swapping order and updating massive cross references and index entries.

In this Adobe/STC interview, renowned thought leader, Mark Lewis, shares keen insights into other benefits of structure. "We need to move to a point where we think of content as a database." People are searching for things on the web and may or may not be finding what they are looking for. Think of entering a recipe, with steps, ingredients and attributes like diabetic or sugar free. When semantic information is entered during structured authoring, both the reader and writer benefit.

In this Adobe/STC booth interview, Mark Baker (Principal Consultant, Analecta Communications) shares new reasons why re-use with structured is so critical. "Re-use is a really important aspect of technical writing today." Structured writing is about adding a structure to your text to make it a "query-able" set of content. We must realize that people no longer read our content in a linear order. Because content is modular and must be capable of being reordered on short notice, we need "plug-and-play" content, where all links will work when components are moved.

In this STC/Adobe booth interview, Kai Weber shares the importance of "just doing it." Don't wait for management to be convinced that you can move forward on a project: create a convincing prototype you can share which makes your improvements obviously essential. "People don't want to go to help in one system, and the online training in another system." Find out how Kai convinced his stakeholders to go with integrated training.

Scott Abel, the Content Wrangler, discusses more findings from his recent, exhaustive Tech Comm Survey in this STC booth interview. Scott reveals that Adobe had 5 of the 10 tools used by survey respondents. Find out which tools, and which other companies ranked in this 45 second mini-video.

In this Adobe interview at STC, Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, shares exciting highlights from his recent Tech Comm survey. Find out in little more than a minute how many companies surveyed have moved to structured authoring, and which form of XML or DITA they are embracing.

Joe Welinske shared keen insights in this area in another Adobe booth interview at STC Summit. "Unless you test your documentation, you have no idea whether it is useful or not. Most companies test everything related to their software in areas of usability." Welinske has been able to test documentation through user surveys and he confesses that "it is a scary thought to consider... has most of this content been useful at all?"

In this interview Jarl Jonas discusses MOOCs, "Massive Online Open Course". Jonas runs a massive online learning site for STC which gives users the ability to connect with one another. The overall goal is to connect learners with one another as well as experts.

In this booth interview, Thought Leader Jack Molisani emphasizes that we should seek out problems and helping find solutions. Instead of branding yourself as a tech writer, describe yourself as a business problem solver.

In this STC interview Danielle Villegas gives an enthusiastic review of "Word Up!", a new book by Marcia Reifer Johnston. "It's good for any type of writing that needs tightening up; not just tech comm."

In this brief Adobe STC interview, the inventor of FrameMaker, Charles Corfield share his vision of the future of Voice Recognition. Charles sees this technology becoming increasingly important for navigation and command implimentation, vs. authoring content. This adds an entire new real of experience that tech content documenters will need to contend with. "Workers can readily memorize voice shortcuts."

In this STC Summit interview with Adobe, Charles Cooper of the Rockley Group discusses how many tech writers are "missing the boat" by focusing on legacy content issues rather than finding out whom they are writing for. As Charles states, we need to think of whom will be reading this content 5 years from now. Charles shares a shocking statistic on the percentage of writers whom have never had direct contact with their audience; he offers creative solutions to fill this void.

Char James-Tanny reveals that 1 out of 8 people or more than 18% of the world population have disabilities. The disabled are part of your audience. This sector has over 1 trillions dollars of buying power. You must find out how to reach everybody that you need to.

Documentation exists to support the application, not just to be read. Traditionally, we have written long procedures with a great deal of overlap, and often more information than the user is seeking. Topic-based authoring with topic, concept and task allows you to write very targeted information with a high degree of reuse. Updating projects is much easier to do with DITA. Topic-based authoring is much more focused, and easier to stay on target.

In this Adobe interview at the STC Summit, Davey contends that we need to use analytics with online documentation and understand what that data means. Recent research with website users has indicated that the documentation we provide is overly long and poorly written. "The answer is modularization and topic-based authoring."

Ann Rockley discuss why we must discover how to take our content from print and put it out their in eBooks. We must view content differently to understand how users would transit from one device to another while consuming content. We must optimize content from a single source for all destination channels.

In this STC Adobe booth interview, Content Strategist Ann Rockley discusses the need to start structured projects from the beginning with content modeling. For instance, you will want you content to look one way in print, and perhaps have different levels of content and appearance on the web. Design work at the beginning is the start of content modeling.

In this STC Summit interview, Andrea Ames covers how we need to overcome some of the old ways of thinking. Especially in the areas of information architecture. Need to design our information for a more "context-less" experience. Customer contribution diminishes our control over content.

Alyssa Fox believes that there is a common misconception that the quality of tech doc created outside the USA is not as good as that created w/in the USA. We need to take time to make sure that all global team members create consistent quality. Alyssa manages a global team and discusses techniques to ensure consistent results.

Alan Porter discussed the importance of story telling in technical communication. Even the DITA model has a beginning, a middle and an end. We remember "stories" more than a collection of facts. Approach your tech communications in this manner

In this Adobe/STC interview, renowned thought leader, Mark Lewis, shares keen insights into other benefits of structure. "We need to move to a point where we think of content as a database." People are searching for things on the web and may or may not be finding what they are looking for. Think of entering a recipe, with steps, ingredients and attributes like diabetic or sugar free. When semantic information is entered during structured authoring, both the reader and writer benefit.

Tables are one of the hallmark power features of FrameMaker. Discover how to combine Artwork from the Reference page, associated with a "Warning" paragraph; then, learn how to make your "Warning" the default paragraph in the first cell of a 2-column table. This enables you to create a new Table of a specific style name that is automatically populated with your desired "Warning" artwork. You can make simple quick edits on the Reference page of your template and update all instances of your boxed Warnings.

Discover a time-saving technique in FrameMaker that allows you to change one class of formatting for multiple paragraph styles in just one step! This simple technique leverages the optional "as is" settings in the PARAGRAPH DESIGNER, to apply only selected changes to multiple styles.

FrameMaker has a powerful ability to externally reference text, known as TEXT INSETS. In this short video, discover how to create a simple "source" document that has multiple TEXT FLOWS; upon import text insets, you are prompted to choose a FLOW. This empowers you to create ONE source FrameMaker file that has all of your referenced "Cautions," "Warnings," and other re-usable text.

Many people love and frequently use USER VARIABLES w/in FrameMaker. Then they get the bright idea of searching for a product name and REPLACE by PASTING FROM CLIPBOARD to insert a VARIABLE. Often, the font values are different from the rest of the paragraph. This short video shows you how to redefine VARIABLES with so that your VARIABLE will pick up all font values from its new host paragraph.

A powerful, yet easy-to-use wehelp skin editor is provided to let you customize not only your content, but the appearance of buttons, labels, fonts, background color, search boxes, and most components of your online content.

Publishing to multichannel, multidevice outputs with a custom look and feel is even faster. Just pick a skin for your content from teh WebHelp gallery and customize help, HTML5, and other outputs in seconds.

Create the ePub you want, with the look that marketing and sales will love! Embed fonts right in your ePub and ensure users see high quality design regardless of their font libraries. Content looks like you want it to, every time.

Suzanne Mescan of VASONT SYSTEMS discusses how component content management solutions (CCMS) differs from traditional CMS. Component content management stores content at the topic or sub-topic level, which is ideal for technical communications. This allows a chunk of "documentation" to be authored one time and used multiple times throughout publications, saving time and cost in translation and other areas.

Steve Walker discusses how there is a talent shortage of content creators who are experienced in creating structured content. Walker maintains that recent software development trends have made it easier to new talent to "come up to speed" in creating structured content. He cites Adobe tools as a particularly good example of "starting you in structure" and maintaining structure as central through the entire publishing cycle.

RoboHelp 10 not only allows you to insert a Captivate video inside of a topic; you can actually create a new topic composed entirely of a Captivate video. Let Adobe Certified Expert @mattrsullivan show you how astonishingly simple the process is with this brief video.

RoboHelp 10 makes it extremely easy to import Captivate published project output. You can bring in either SWF files or HTML5. This brief video shows you how to insert a Captivate SWF file that is provided with RoboHelp 10 SW, so you can follow the steps to achieve the same results. Learn how to make your RoboHelp projects even more dynamic and compelling. Adobe Certified Expert, @mattrsullivan shows you how.

RoboHelp 10 has easy to use tools for creating style sheets (CSS.) But what if you don't know what fonts a user will have in their browser for your published WebHelp or HTML project? That's where Fontsets come in. Font sets allow you to list fonts to use by order or your preference. In this brief video, you will see how to (a) create a font set with 3 fonts styles and (b) apply the font set (just like a font) to styles in the CSS. It's easier to do than it sounds and this 3 minute video will show you how.